My Dad and Republicans: a Contrast of Views of Their Fellow Man (and Women)

February 14, 2016

My Dad was a great man. He was a union leader at Gulf Oil Corporation from the early 1940’s to when he retired in 1965. Over the years Dad petitioned the company for equal rights in the plant dressing rooms back when “whites only” and “colored” signs were above the entry doors. Until the signs were taken down. Relentlessly, he kept his potter’s wheel of equality turning for all men. He was a molder of human rights and good as he shaped his pot of human rights for all men and all colors of men. And women. Women back then were treated with disrespect and scorn as second-class workers and paid accordingly. He bargained with Gulf that women, too, would receive the same pay as men. He elevated, as best he could, their collective worth as human beings to that of being as fit as men to do the same jobs and hold the same positions. Not with better rights but with equal rights. Dad bargained with Gulf Oil that they would be considered for the highest order of job considerations. And through his efforts, some of them were elevated to be the bosses of men. The women knew him or knew of him because of his work as an unwavering champion of human workers who had little without a spirit like him, a human force, to help them ascend. He was that champion.

His work got around in the buzz of just not Gulf, but at the Texaco Refinery, too. Then Pure Oil, American Petro Fina, Magnolia (which morphed into Exxon/Mobil) then, the rest of the chain of thousands refinery workers in Jefferson County Texas followed suit. They knew him. And so did the oil companies.

Later he began to work on equal status for the Office Workers. They had been paid poorly for decades. Their job classification had been written by male fingers and hands (whose brains happened to be attached) were simply afraid a woman might prove to be more competent than some men and receive a man’s promotions. And pay. Many women worked as secretaries and clerks in the office. It was an unspoken rule back in the 1940s and 1950s that women should know their place and accept lower assignments, lesser jobs which were unofficially tagged as second class positions.

Dad called bullshit to Gulf, that Office Workers were important workers too and had the same rights to equal pay and status as boilermakers or still operators. It made Gulf go weak in the knees to hear such heresy! Surely, the men workers would go bat shit crazy and maybe even go on strike! Yet Dad laid it all on the table, his very job at Gulf, included. So he negotiated, with the help of a handful of male co-workers, to get equal pay for women and Office Workers.

So what did the giant oil company do? Well, the company management decided to kick my dad upstairs in order to get him out of their hair once and for all. But Dad refused all promotions for years. At almost double the pay! He was a human being with a higher integrity. And he never shrank back in his quest to help those without little hope or downtrodden by the Company. His work was not done for the working man and woman. Imagine that! A man with principles for all men and women for all workers, both men and women. And Office Workers who did not lift heavy barrels of grease or unload boxcars! Holy Cow! Both Management and Laborers knew he was right. The head office in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania even heard of him. Who was this dude, anyway? But word was that Gulf Management admired him. For his chutzpah. And his track record as an outstanding employee.

Management employees, the higher-ups at Gulf grumbled to themselves. But that was that. He and those who helped him negotiate these monumental changes for all men and women at the refinery, well, they won. All were elated. And they celebrated. And Management, with wry, crooked smiles, clapped with sweating palms. They would take the credit and call PR to publicize how they, in their benign benevolence, had decided on their own to do good stuff for all refinery workers, both men and women alike.

Pittsburg even got in on the act. At that time the PR Departments made it plain that out of the goodness of their hearts, they had increased pay for all workers and had given new job classifications without regard to sex, or job descriptions, and later on, the race issues. It took a while for them to agree to not discriminate because of color. The domino that was about to fall was the segregation of blacks and whites as fellow human being refinery workers.

The shower houses with restrooms ‘Coloreds Only’ signs above the entry doors were taken down. They fell down to the gravel with a loud thud heard around the Gulf Coast from Florida to southern tip of Texas! The seaport rim of the Gulf Coast marks the locations of 100s of oil refineries that set up over 100 years ago to receive crude oil from tankers. And ship out gasoline manufactured at the refineries. They all followed suit.

It is now 2016, and Trump and several other like-minded trolls are running for president of the United States. You got to ask: How would they view the efforts and gains my father contributed to the working men and women of America? Would they sneer the word ‘Liberal’ through clinched teeth? Call him a commie? Applaud him for taking dollars out of their deep pockets? Do these GOP candidates really, truly care about their fellow Americans they wish would vote for them? Or do they work for the big money? Greed. Keeping all their money instead of paying fair taxes on a graduated income tax system, perhaps? Rand Paul and his daddy talk down to welfare recipients. They both give their “Cradle to Grave” dance to all those who expect government to take care of them forever. They go to the extreme in their insults because it is a dirtier place to slur untruths than the moderate road of working men and women who do honest work for a living. And expect a Social Security pension that they have paid into all their working lives. And how have both Pauls’ voted on raising minimum wage? Social Security?

Hell, Paul Ryan sponsored bills to cut Veterans benefits. Then after the blowback from Veterans’ groups and the populace as a whole, Ryan backed off. He rationalized his wanting to cut benefits. Like, in it would take tax dollars away from maintaining our military. Yet he said nothing Bush’s massive 2 trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich, still alive and well. Well, now.

With these selfish, self-centered buggers, I got to ask: “Are there no nuthouses? Are there no lack-of conscience- prisons?” No punitive places for liars and pompous assholes like Trump whose success is due to his righteous, self-proclaimed non-affiliation with Washington politics? As he spews horse turds and arouses the Bubbas and Bubbettes in order to increase his numbers on polls eat up with the dumbass? And his spewing crap to ban Muslims (religion) from coming to America? Have we sunk that low that we would give credence to such a dung beetle? Maybe his qualifications to run for president would be for him to take a remedial course in high school American History so he might understand how America was born by establishing unalienable rights for all men and women, of any race, color, or creed. You think?

Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,Of every tongue, of every place, Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,All that inhabit this great earth,Whatever be their rank or worth,Are kindred and allied by birth, And made of the same clay. –Henry David Longfellow (1807-1882)

I think Trump and his fellow trolls should read a little Longfellow, too, don’t you? But then Trump might want great poets’ verses to be banned, too. Tango Sierra, Trump.